Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Operación Photo1000

Photo 1000 is a very special photo for the Panoramio Team. It is one of the first photos in Panoramio (1000 was a milestone) and it is the photo that we always use to test new features. It is a photo from Fredrik Johansson taken in one of the 23,000 islands in front of Stockholm, in Sweden.

Some months ago in a lunch-chat we decided to visit Erik’s hometown in Sweden as he was always explaining how amazing were the meatballs in his favorite restaurant back in Stockholm, the Pelikan. During one of this conversations we suggested to take advantage of the trip and visit Photo 1000.

There were a couple of challenges on this decision:
1. Photo 1000 is taken in an island that is not reachable by regular ferries.
2. Would Photo 1000 be well geopositioned?

After preparing some logistics we took a regional ferry from Stockholm to the island of Möja (2.5h). There is a fantastic restaurant there that serves fresh local fish, so we enjoyed a nice meal before continuing our trip. From Möja to the coordinates we wanted to go, there is no other option than going by private transportation so Erik talked some days in advance with a local Captain that normally brings tourists to visit seals. He was kind of shocked by our request but he agreed on bringing us there. Before departing, he asked us though whether we wanted to see the seals and he promised we would have enough time for everything. We agreed on that and after an hour or so on the boat we found the seals floating on the sea.

After some seal-shooting we continued and here is were our problems began. The motor of the boat started to make strange noises and what it was worst, daylight started to decline. We were in a hurry to reach the location but the captain could do nothing but decrease the speed. This is when we started to fear that we would never reach the coordinates we pointed the captain to. The boat continued slowly towards final destination and we could see in our GPS devices that we were almost there, not sure though whether we would find what we were looking for.

Some minutes later... the place was there. Everyone on the boat got extremely excited. We managed to find the place and what it is more important: the location was accurate and real!

The captain allowed us to disembark the boat and go to Photo 1000 location while he would call someone for help, as the boat was still making those weird noises. There were obviously no piers in the island so it took a while until the captain found a spot were to attach a rope. We went finally to the place where the photo was taken and we spend some time enjoying the location and taking photos ourselves. 30 min later a strong rain made us go back to the boat while we waited for the motor to be checked. Everything ended fine and we could safely return to harbor.

The result was an Epic Win!

I would like to thank Erik for the organization of the logistics. The team, for the great time I spent in this adventure, the captain for bringing us there, but I would like to thank specially Fredrik Johansson for taking this amazing photo, for geoposition it correctly so we would not get lost, and specially for making us discover this amazing location. Exploring the world with Panoramio can be done in a crazy way (as we just did) or it can be done from your living-room and this is all thanks to all the members of the Panoramio Community that keep on amazing us everyday with those amazing photos of places.

Many thanks to all of you!

P.S.: If you happen to have a similar story or plan to... get in touch and we will publish it in the Panoramio blog!